April 16, 2023
Spanish woman emerges into daylight after 500 days living in cave
"Didn't want to come out": Spanish woman emerges into daylight after 500 days living in cave as part of a research project. Beatriz Flamini, an elite sportswoman, celebrated two birthdays in the 70-metre-deep cave, having gone in before the war on Ukraine started and the Queen's death. [more inside]
Whaddya call a person who hangs out with musicians? A harmonica player.
Pocket Full Of Soul: The Harmonica Documentary [1h26m, 2009] is precisely what it says on the tin. I can't think of many who I can picture playing harmonica who don't appear in this movie. It's full of joy and harmonica music. CW: Harmonica Music
Ping-Pong against Parkinson's
Hello from lunar orbit! 🌔
An eclipse, the heart of a supernova, rockets up and down the gravity well, and more missions. Here's a snapshot of humanity's exploration of space in April 2023. [more inside]
A Satirist in the Abbasid Era
Satire is among the most powerful tools for bringing the powerful back down to earth, and al-Jahiz from ninth-century Iraq was a master of the craft. Beyond his powerful connections, his financial independence may also have helped make him one of the few writers who could speak freely, not only about the maladies of their age but also its various classes and subclasses.
Unpupular opinions for breaches of beachside conduct
"I unclipped her leash and Kit began to saunter, then run, one step ahead of the frothy surf, like a sandpiper. The wind pinned her floppy ears against her head, and she flung herself down to roll ecstatically in some dead, washed-up thing. She looked happy; she looked free; she looked right. In that, Kit wasn’t alone—many dogs love the beach. But the beach doesn’t love our dogs." [more inside]
Education and Censorship in the US
Children's author Maggie Tokuda-Hall lost a deal with Scholastic to license her book about love and the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II because Scholastic (the world's largest book publisher and distributor of children's literature) requested that she remove the mention of racism in her author's note. Scholastic, after the public outcry, has apologized and offered to restart the conversation with her. Meanwhile, book challenges and bans of "woke" material continue to proceed at an alarming rate in the US. [more inside]
A picture is worth a thouand dollars
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